What apps can you actually get from Huawei’s App Gallery?

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(Pocket-lint) – Over the past two years, Huawei has made a concerted effort to go beyond Google, creating its own ecosystem of products that tie together. It no longer includes Google Play Store or Google Mobile Services (GMS) on its phones, and won’t for the foreseeable future.

Essentially, any phone launched from late 2019 launched without Google services, which means Huawei has invested time and money into developing a viable alternative.

The situation is not Huawei’s fault. The previous US administration made no secret of its distrust of virtually anything Chinese and banned US companies from doing business with Huawei – a trade ban.

The background is that he does not want Huawei’s cheap and well-used network equipment to be deployed and has banned Huawei from using American technologies. In the UK, this is manifested by a total ban on Huawei 5G networking equipment which comes into play from 2027.

The trade ban has had a knock-on effect on major US companies, including Google, which is losing revenue – although Microsoft has apparently given carte blanche to continue selling Windows to the company, as seen with the Huawei MateBook X Pro.

Can the App Gallery be a success in the UK and Europe?

As you’ll hear, Huawei’s App Gallery is quite different from Google’s Play Store in terms of what it offers, but that’s not a start – the store has over 580 million active users. who return to the store every month, with 42 countries having over 1 million users.

Such a user base is possible because Google services are not ubiquitous in China like they are in the United States and Europe. If you have a Huawei phone in China, you have been using App Gallery with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) for a long time. In total, App Gallery is already available in more than 170 countries, in 78 languages.

The entire store design is also very different from Google Play, with Huawei devoting time and effort to editorial suggestions and discovery, helping to highlight popular games and apps for the region in which the store is located. store is browsed. Its entire layout is focused on browsing, rather than searching and this has seen developer sign-ups – especially for games – increase massively.

This puts Huawei in a rather unique position – unlike Microsoft, Samsung and others who have tried and failed miserably to create rival app stores, it doesn’t start on the back foot.

At the start of this journey, Huawei chief Richard Yu told us at the Mate 30 launch in September 2019 that the phone maker would revert to Google overnight if the trade ban was lifted.

Huawei’s philosophy seems to have changed since then. There has been a huge acceleration of Huawei’s existing long-term strategy to establish its own app store outside of China.

What apps are available on Huawei’s App Gallery?

The good news is that Huawei is in the process of persuading some names to show up at App Gallery. Microsoft gets involved, as does Amazon. Deezer, Lufthansa, TikTok, Tidal, JD Sports, Adidas, Booking.com, Trainline, Viber, and Opera also have apps on the store. Quantity isn’t really an issue on App Gallery, it’s quality.

There’s also now a decent maps app in the form of Petal Maps which offers navigation, live traffic and public transport information. Huawei is also elevating certain apps to “hero status”, which essentially means “must have”.

Besides Google, the biggest issue with App Gallery adoption is the lack of core apps from the other big tech companies that are so popular in the UK and Europe – Twitter, Facebook’s main app, Instagram , WhatsApp and Messenger. Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video.

However, it is a solution in the form of Petal Search which will allow you to download APK files of apps on Huawei phones. Some of them – like Facebook and WhatsApp – come straight from the official source, so you know they’re safe. Others come from unofficial APK sites, but Huawei phones scan the files to make sure they are safe before they can be installed.

The main downside is that they don’t update automatically, so you need to check that your app version is up to date quite often.

Coincidentally, Huawei suggests users that they can transfer apps to the latest phones from their old device using Phone Clone, but that means they won’t be able to get automatic updates for those apps. in the future and any Google integration – like with Google Drive – will not work.

Comparison of the best Play Store apps with Huawei App Gallery

For comparison, let’s compare some of the best apps in the UK Google Play Store with what’s available in the UK version of App Gallery.

We ignored the Google apps that were on the list – Google Play Games, Hangouts Meet, Google Docs and Google Classroom as they are obviously not available on App Gallery and provide an unfair comparison in our book.

You will see the mention of quick apps in the list. It’s a way to get a basic web experience of the service and add a shortcut to your home screen, similar to an app, but not quite. We’ve also bolded which ones are there, to make it easier to see which ones are actually there.

1. NHS App – No
2. TikTok – Yes
3. McDonald’s UK – No
4. Disney+ – No
5. Tesco Grocery – No
6. WhatsApp – No (but you can download the APK directly from WhatsApp)
7. Vinted – Yes
8. Too good to leave – Yes
9. Nextdoor – No (but there is a quick app)
10. Shein – Yes
11. Uber Eats – No (but there is a fast app)
12. Snapchat – Yes
13. Instagram – No
14. Revolution – Yes
15. Telegram – Yes
16. Trainline – Yes
17. Microsoft Teams – No (but there is a quick app)
18. Lidl Plus – Yes
19. Paypal – No
20. E.On Next – No
21. Buy through Shopify – No
22. British Gas – Yes
23. Uber – No (but there is a quick app)
24. Asda Rewards – No
25. Scottish Power – No
26. Booking.com – Yes
27. Netflix – No
28. Reddit – No (but there is a quick app)
29. Prime Video – No
30. Amazon purchases – Yes
31. Deliveroo – No (but there is a speed app)
32. Discord – No
33. Messenger – No
34. Twitter – No
35. Tesco Clubcard – No
36. Chase UK – No
37. Zoom – No
38. Ebay – No (but there is a quick app)
39. Just eat – Yes
40. AllTrails – No

Frequently searches for apps yielded alternatives which tended to be approximations of the real thing – but that’s also a problem with additional copycat apps on the Play Store and on iOS/iPadOS sometimes too.

Obviously, there is still work to be done, but it is not an impossible situation. As mentioned, when you search the app gallery now, the app’s APK results will also be displayed via Petal Search, so you can download apps both officially and unofficially, with Huawei’s software ensuring that there is nothing dangerous in the download.

So that means that even though these apps don’t reside in the app gallery, you can still get pretty much all of them on your phone. Similarly, for those default apps like Google Docs, Maps and Notes etc, Huawei has built its own alternatives which work well, so there’s clear progress being made.

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Is it easy for developers to submit their apps?

It’s actually relatively simple for developers to submit their apps to App Gallery – because Huawei’s EMUI operating system is based on Android, it’s fully compatible with it. Developers can essentially submit the same application.

Huawei also helps developers with technical support and integrates things like in-app purchases.

However, there are problems. Suppose your app uses Google Drive to store backups – like WhatsApp does – then suddenly your app is broken, because there is no Google Drive support in HMS and so you have to find another place to place the backup. Additionally, games on Android often integrate with Google Play Games.

This connection is also now broken. Basically, if the app previously used some integration with Google services, it needs to be reworked.

Some Android APIs are also exclusive to GMS, so they won’t work on other versions of Android, which further complicates this.

Written by Dan Grabham. Edited by Cam Bunton.